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Monday, March 30, 2015

TV Recap: Once Upon a Time 4-16 - Best Laid Plans

Wow! That was a lot
to take in this week. So let’s get to
it.

Our flashback finds Snow and Charming trying to determine
whether their child will be good or bad.
They go to a unicorn for help because holding its horn will give them a
vision. And Charming sees a sweet and
good child. However, Snow sees their child
ripping out Snow’s heart. When Snow
says, “But I’m your mother,” the teen replies, “I don’t care.”

While they are walking home trying to figure out what their
competing visions mean, they meet a peddler who warns them about Mal’s nesting
down the road (literally since she’s laid an egg) and sends them to someone who
can provide answers – the Sorcerer’s Apprentice. When they reach his cottage, they learn that
the baby could be good or bad, and there is no way to guarantee it.

Well, there is one way, a spell that will send the potential
for evil in their unborn child into another vessel – another unborn child. And so Snow and Charming decide to steal Mal’s
egg and use that as the vessel. They get
past Mal’s two guards (Cruella and Ursula) and manage to steal the egg from the
dragon Mal. However, she turns into her
human form and pleads for them to return the egg. They say they will – as soon as the spell is
enacted.

However, once the Apprentice finishes the spell, he
announces that they must send the egg far away since it will be so evil they
don’t want it anywhere near them. He
opens a portal to swallow the egg.
Cruella and Ursula show up to take the egg back, and the two witches
plus the egg wind up swallowed. So that’s
how Cruella and Ursula wound up in our world outside of the curse.

The final scene of the flashback shows us Charming and Snow
trying to deal with their guilty consciences.
Charming finally explains to Snow that they must be better than they
were before to overcome the evil they’ve just done and stay the heroes they
want to be.

Meanwhile, in Storybrooke…

August gets sick and is taken to the Blue Fairy, aka Mother Superior,
who explains that he has had too many form changing spells enacted on him and
he has to fight off the most recent on his own.
Emma has to explain to a jealous Hook that he has nothing to fear from
August as a rival, but that August is one of her friends from a time in her
life when she didn’t make friends easily.

Meanwhile, there’s the question of what to do with the page
that has the author imprisoned in it.
Regina doesn’t want to take the original page back to Gold and the
others for obvious reasons, so Emma conjures up a forgery. It’s close, but not quite as good as the one
in the book, but Regina hits on a different solution. She takes a picture of the page and assumes
that will keep them hunting for the door that doesn’t really exist in
Sleepyside.

Just one problem, Gold takes one look at the picture and
realizes that magic is involved even via the photograph. He knows what it means, too, the author is
trapped in the page. Mal puts the town
under a sleeping curse so that they can go steal the real page.

The curse doesn’t work on those who have already been under
a sleeping curse, however, meaning that Mary Margaret, David, and Henry are all
awake. Henry quickly realizes what is
going on and takes off for the Sorcerer’s house to try to hide. Mary Margaret and David have been off trying
to deal with Hook’s news that Gold wants to turn Emma dark. Their secret is eating at Mary Margaret and
she doesn’t know what to do about it.
She even hates that they’ve been lying to Emma.

Our villains plus Regina realize that Henry has taken off to
hide the book, so Regina goes to get it from him, only Gold sends Cruella and
Mal off to make sure she does whatever it takes to get that page. Regina isn’t thrilled to see them show up
just as she finds Henry, but Henry figures out the message that Regina is
trying to tell him and he gives Regina the fake page, keeping the real one for
himself.

Gold sees right through the fake page, however, and
considers it proof that Regina has been working under cover. He uses magic to knock her unconscious and
takes her to the vault where he does something to her that will basically make
her a sleeper for him. Something will
trigger Regina turning into Gold’s slave, and we don’t know what it is.

Meanwhile, Mary Margaret and David have shown up at the
Sorcerer’s house where Henry is still hiding.
He’s found the key that locks the Author from the book, but instead of
letting the Author out, Mary Margaret and David have decided to destroy the
page. They talk Henry into turning
everything over to them. Before they can
destroy the page, Mary Margaret’s conscious gets the better of her, even
talking about her heart turning dark.
But she doesn’t think the darkness in her heart started when she killed
Cora, she thinks it was as a result of stealing Mal’s baby all those years
ago. It is time to come clean to Emma,
so they take the book and go.

At some point, the town must have awakened from the curse
because Emma, Hook, and everyone else is awake in the next scene. Emma doesn’t react well to the story, leaving
the house after having the conversation from Snow’s vision. A pleading Mary Margaret says, “But I’m your
mother” to which Emma replies, “I don’t care.”

A while later, Hook comes and finds Emma, who is staring at
the page. August is awake and doing
well! Mary Margaret and David are with
him. Emma is not ready to forgive them,
but at least she has opened up to Hook again.

We have two other scenes to talk about before we get to the
final scene.

First, while Cruella and Mal were following Regina to get
the page, Gold went to his shop to visit Belle.
She was under the sleeping curse, but he picked her up and set her on a
couch. He then told her that the price
for all the magic he’s use has come back to get him. He is going to try to undo that and come back
to her.

Meanwhile, near the end, Mal demands to know what became of
her child. Gold warns her that it might
cause more pain for her, but she wants to know.
Gold offers her a glimpse of 30 years ago when the baby was
adopted. Her new father decided to name
her Lily.

So, for the final scene, Emma goes to visit the recovering
August. Mary Margaret and David are
there, and Emma is not happy about hat, but she still shows August the page and
the key. August then warns her that this
Author was different. While there have
been many through the years (including one named Walt), the reason this Author
was trapped in the book was because he was starting to create the stories, not merely
record them like a historian, and the earlier Authors, would. In fact, we see the Sorcerer’s Apprentice
trapping the author in the book after complaining about what the Apprentice had
been forced to do by the Author in this week’s flashback. (The Author’s response? It made a better story.) But Emma doesn’t care. She uses the key and frees the Author so she
can get answers about what the bombshell her parents have just told her means
for her life.

The Author? Oh, he’s
the peddler who had sent Snow and Charming to the Apprentice in the
flashback. Emma demands answers, but the
Author manages to flee the room and disappear into Storybrooke.

End episode. For two
weeks!

There’s a lot to process in this episode. Fortunately, Emma talked about her first real
friend, Lily, early in the episode, so I was able to make that connection. The girl she met and hung out with before
going to the Snow Queen’s foster home is Mal’s daughter? Interesting.
Can’t wait to see how we track her down (because you just know she’s
going to show up in Storybrooke before the season is over). But, the real question is, how evil is she
since Emma can obvious be turned to evil.
At least Gold thinks she can be.

Why did this author start manipulating the story? How did he even get that power? And what will he do to the town now that he
is free?

What did Gold do to Regina?
What is her trigger? And how long
will it take people to figure out what is happening after she becomes Gold’s
slave? I’m guessing Henry will figure it
out first after their silent communication about the page in front of Cruella
and Mal.

And did we know Henry’s middle name was Daniel, aka the
Stable Boy, before? That sounded like
news to me, and I like it.

What is Gold talking about when he talks about the
consequences of all his magic? He was
holding his heart, so it seems like a medical problem. But I thought he was immortal as The Dark One
until someone plunges the dagger into his heart. What was that all about?

I’m beginning to wonder if Emma will truly turn evil. For the first time, I started to question it
since I’ve thought that was where she was going all along this half of the
season. Obviously, she’s mad at her
parents and will have to work through that, but might she not turn evil? That would be quite a twist, wouldn’t it,
since they seem to be leading up to it.
If she does, will Regina be in any shape to help her on the road back to
good? Or will Lily be the one to do
that? Again, that would be an
interesting twist since Lily is supposed to be the evil one.

I already can’t wait for the episode the Sunday after Easter
to see how they continue the story. So
many possibilities to come from what we’ve learned so far, and I can’t wait to
see where they actually do go with this story.

2 comments:

Lily! I had forgotten all about the girl Emma befriended as a teen and that Her name is Lily. That is quite the twist. I knew that peddler was too good to be true and that there was more to him then just a simple person they meet on their way. Charming should have burned that page in the fire after all - no good can come of this. Loved the touch of mentioning the name of one of the authors is Walt. Many good things about this episode that it was almost too hard to follow at times. And next episode looks interesting - now, could it be that Lily is really the wicked Witch of the East? (or whatever direction it was). She is truly evil after all. And now that the writer (he is not the author, we found that out this week) is lose he can really change things around! And I'm also wondering how this writer got the stories to appear in the book when they weren't there before and yet he's been locked away. Am I missing something here?

I wouldn't have remembered Lily if Emma hadn't mentioned her earlier in the episode. Plus, at this point, I'm more surprised when we don't have a connection to a new character than when we do.

There must be a new Author out there writing down the stuff that is happening after the Author we just freed was imprisoned. That is a good point about how later stories got in the book, and I hadn't thought of it.

Lily might be evil, but I don't think she's connected to Oz. I'm not sure how they are bringing Oz into play, but I'm curious to find out, that's for sure.

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